Slothy, the Student and the Faeries
by Tylf-the-cowardly
Summary: The faeries are out to get you...the faeries...
1. Chapter 1

**Slothy, the Student and the Faeries**

**Chapter 1**

What a wonderful day. Not a cloud in the sky, a slight breeze in the air and busy neopets milling around the town square. Taren the red kyrii loved it here. She felt so much part of all the universal activity yet completely individual, cut-off, separate as well. "One of many, part of all," she whispered to herself – a quote from one of her favorite books, which described her emotions perfectly. Taren couldn't believe that she'd spent a whole term at neocollege already! She was lodging at the neohome of the infamous Dr Sloth, and at first, he had hated her. But after a damaged carpet, trampoline, vacuum cleaner, set of baseballs, and one permanently scarred reputation, they…well, they didn't exactly become friends…they just tolerated each other more easily. Anyway, Sloth was coming down to Neopia to spend the holiday with Taren in mediocre luxury in a three-star neolodge; Taren herself was shopping for some astrophysics handbooks, spectacle polish (and maybe some gel to tame her frizzled-looking hair? Nah…) and nothing could be more perfect.

Taren had just decided to stop for a triple cheese cheeseburger by the rainbow pool when she first heard it. "Junk food? A respectable young lady like yourself should not consume such trash!" Startled, Taren looked up and around. Nobody there. How strange – she was sure that that prim female voice was actually talking to her and was not just a snippet of conversation detected by her sensitive ears. She took off her glasses to clean them with her newly purchased spectacle polish. As she was rubbing them with a cloth, the voice spoke again, causing Taren to drop her glasses in panic. This disembodied voice was beginning to really freak her out. A crowd was gathering around the weird red kyrii who kept looking wildly over her shoulder and conversing with the air. All the commotion had attracted the attention of a tall masked figure wearing a curly, blonde wig and fluorescent yellow raincoat, who was now walking briskly towards the kyrii, shoving aside all the pets that got in his way.

"Taren!" She just continued staring around, muttering incoherently to herself. The person in the raincoat placed his arm around her and led her away. "Move aside," he ordered in a commanding voice. "Nothing to see here."

Back at the Neolodge, Dr Frank Sloth (for that was who was under the wig, mask and raincoat) sat Taren down in one of the wicker chairs in their room. With a worried glance at his student, Sloth picked up the receiver of the hotel telephone in their room and dialled in a number. He fiddled nervously with the phone cord while it bleeped repeatedly into his ear. Little as he wanted to admit it, even to himself, he was getting rather attached to the little kyrii. "Hello, Neomaniac Mental Hospital here, how may we help you?"

"Uh, yeah- I mean yes," Sloth quickly switched to a quavering falsetto. "My friend Taren is in dire need of professional medical aid! No, she doesn't have a history of mental illness. Mm-hm…mm-hm…Neolodge Hotel, room nine. Yes. Thank you, bye." The evil genius paced around the room for what seemed like millennia for the pets in white coats to arrive.

A blurry green gelert in a crisp white labcoat swam slowly into Taren's view. He was obviously trying not to make any sudden moves. "My…name…is…Dr…Lerti…What…is…the…matter?" The slightly dull-eyed doctor could not have differed more from the panicked kyrii with a wild, reckless spark in her eyes, like a frightened lupe in a trap. She had been conversing two hours straight with some invisible stranger, and it showed: her normally frizzy hair was standing on end even more than usual and her paws were trembling uncontrollably with fear.

"Th-th-the faeries!" Taren screamed, pointing over the fuzzy gelert's shoulder. Two out-of-focus, beautiful winged women, far too slender and graceful to be human, drifted almost lazily behind Dr Lerti. Without warning, one of them reached out to grab Taren's arm. The faerie's touch was light, cool, fresh, yet to the petrified kyrii, it felt like the caress of a slorg. Repulsed, Taren thrashed around, trying to throw off the faerie (who was twice as tall as herself).

As if from a great distance, the gelert doctor's voice reached her large ears. "Do…you…want…to…come…with…me?"

"Yes! Yes! Take me away from the faeries!" she wailed desperately. Dr Lerti took Taren's paw, leading her out of the room. The shimmering faeries dissipated as if made of smoke when he bravely (it seemed to Taren) strode through them.

To be continued… 


	2. Chapter 2

**Slothy, the Student and the Faeries**

**Chapter 2**

"How dare you take her away from me?" Dr Sloth bellowed at the gelert from beneath his mask and blonde wig, falsetto voice forgotten. He could see the little kyrii being bundled into the back of a white van rocking back and forth. "You can't do this! I am Taren's guardian!"

"I'm afraid we can, sir," Dr Lerti replied. He spoke very slowly to the seething Sloth as if he was another mental patient. "Your kyrii is mentally unstable and she has come with us voluntarily."

When Taren awoke, her surroundings came into much better focus. Someone must have given her a new pair of glasses, though not of a prescription as high as she required. She felt as if she had passed out for days, although evidently not as she was still in the back of the van. The van? Then all her memories came rushing back: the voice – the faeries – Dr Lerti – no more faeries! Taren felt so alive and free! There was the kindly gelert doctor at the door of the van, beckoning her to follow him into a clinically clean white building. "Wow this is so cool do I get a straitjacket and everything?" Taren asked, now her nervous, yet incredibly talkative self again.

Dr Lerti chuckled almost evilly as he replied, "Oh no, that's only in the movies." With that, he shoved the helpless kyrii into a completely empty room, then shut the door. Taren struggled up from her knees, shaken and extremely indignant. The lock had clicked in the door. She ambled over to the one window to gaze at the overcast, darkening sky. Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad – pretty soon Dr Sloth will come and persuade them to let her out and they'd all see that she wasn't insane and do as he asked so she could continue to live with him and study astrophysics. Taren yelped, jumping back as a flash of lightning illuminated the heavens above. The phenomenon, which had fascinated her so profoundly as a child, seemed now to hurl her back into a panicked frenzy. She rubbed her paws, quivering, agitated as she muttered and spluttered to herself, "No faeries here no faerie's gonna haunt Taren here not where Taren's safe a-and warm and-" Another flash streaked across the sky followed by a mighty growling rumble, causing the diminutive kyrii to duck and cover her face and ears, squeaking in fear.

Presently, Taren gained enough courage to open one eye, then the other. She fancied she could hear music, a languid melody tinkling from the furthest recesses of her imagination. She looked up. The faeries! For the first time, she could clearly see these creatures of transcendent beauty with their softly fluttering wings. There were four of them doing the most curious thing: they were standing facing each other, two on each side, their arms outstretched and touching to form an arch. They were singing, too. A sweet, merry tune that Taren could remember her mother singing when she was very young, a song from the human world as old Mrs Saxton always said. However, at the lethargic pace the faeries were singing, each beat carried the toll of a death bell. Their rather dead, hollow, staring eyes didn't help much. Before she knew it, Taren felt an inexorable urge to approach the faeries. She complied, skipping in slow motion in a figure-eight, in and out of the arch, her bloodshot orbs bulging yet unseeing while the faeries sang.

"'Oranges and lemons,' say the bells of St Clement's,

'Lend me five farthings,' say the bells of St Martin's,

'When will you pay me?' say the bells of Old Bailey,

'When I grow rich,' say the bells of Shoreditch,

'And when will that be?' say the bells of Stepney,

'I do not know,' says the great bell of Bow.

Here comes the candle to light you to bed,

And here come the faeries to make you ill in the head."

That certainly wasn't how Taren remembered the song ending. She stared, momentarily broken from her trance, as the faeries drifted and spiralled into each corner of the room, disappearing in four glittering clouds of smoke and a shrill chorus of insane cackling. Then silence. Taren sank slowly to the floor, hugging her knees tightly as if afraid of losing her body as well as her mind, her eyes bloodshot and bulging once again. She rocked back…and forth…back…and forth…

_The End_


End file.
